“…It needs less assumptions, allows one to see the details of the damage, and to account for the high-frequency models that are ''invisible'' in the continuum limit. Some bistable-link chain models were considered in a number of works (see Troyankina, 1984, 1988;Puglisi and Truskinovsky, 2000;Slepyan, 2000Slepyan, , 2001Slepyan, , 2002Balk et al, 2001a,b;Charlotte and Truskinovsky, 2002;Ngan and Truskinovsky, 1999;Cherkaev and Zhornitskaya, 2003). In the present paper we consider a chain with waiting links, formulate the dynamic equations, and estimate the gap role in the resistance of the chain to quasi-static and dynamic extension.…”