Pontoon bridge using a single 'o'. The U.S. military differentiated between the bridge itself ("ponton") and the floats used to provide buoyancy ("pontoon"). The original word was derived from Old French "ponton", from Latin "ponto" ("ferryboat"), from "pons" ("bridge"). When designing a pontoon bridge, the civil engineer must take into consideration the Archimedes' principle: Each pontoon can support a load equal to the mass of the water that it displaces. This load includes the mass of the bridge and the pontoon itself. If the maximum load of a bridge section is exceeded, one or more pontoons become submerged. Flexible connections have to
Cable fairing Cable fairing A cable fairing is a structure attached to a towed cable designed to streamline the flow around the cable, primarily in marine environments. Cables are faired primarily for two reasons: (1) to reduce normal drag and thus achieve more depth for a given cable scope and speed; and (2) to eliminate cable vibration caused by vortex shedding, commonly known as cable strum. There are several major types of cable fairing: All cables (faired or unfaired) have hydrodynamic loading functions. These describe the variation in drag coefficient as a function of angle formula_1 with respect to the flow. As