Breather propagation in a damped oscillatory chain with Hertzian nearest-neighbour coupling is investigated. The breather propagation exhibits an unusual two-stage pattern. The first stage is characterized by power-law decay of the breather amplitude. This stage extends over finite number of the chain sites. Drastic drop of the breather amplitude towards the end of this finite fragment is referred to as breather arrest. At the second stage, the breather exhibits very small amplitudes with hyper-exponential decay. Numeric results are rationalized by considering a simplified model of two damped linear oscillators coupled by Hertzian contact forces. Initial excitation of one of these oscillators results in a finite number of beating cycles in the system. This simplified model reliably predicts main features of the breather arrest. More general coupling potentials and effect of pre-compression on the breather propagation are also discussed.

研究了具有赫兹最近邻耦合的阻尼振荡链中的呼吸传播。呼吸传播表现出不寻常的两阶段模式。第一阶段的特点是呼吸器振幅的幂律衰减。这个阶段扩展到有限数量的链位点。呼吸器振幅在这个有限片段的末端急剧下降被称为呼吸器停止. 在第二阶段，呼吸器表现出非常小的振幅和超指数衰减。通过考虑由赫兹接触力耦合的两个阻尼线性振荡器的简化模型，对数值结果进行了合理化。这些振荡器之一的初始激励导致系统中的跳动周期数量有限。这个简化的模型可靠地预测了呼吸停止的主要特征。还讨论了更一般的耦合电位和预压缩对呼吸器传播的影响。