ABSTRACT
Many mechanical theories to describe the behaviour of sturzstrom have been advanced by researchers over the last century. The first of these theories involved mechanical fluidisation which was suggested by Albert Heim in 1882 after his investigation of the famous Elm sturzstrom (Hsu, 1978). This was later supported to some degree by Hsu (1975) who suggested that sturzstrom are likely to follow Bagnoldian (i.e. collisional) grain flow behaviour. Further theories advanced since 1882 include air cushioning (Kent, 1966), air fluidization (Shreve, 1968), the development of frictionite (Erismann, 1979) and acoustic fluidization (Melosh, 1983).
