  The damping of collective rotational motion is investigated by means of
particles-rotor model in which the angular momentum coupling is treated exactly
and the valence nucleons are in a multi-$j$ shell mean-field. It is found that
the onset energy of rotational damping is around 1.1 MeV above yrast line, and
the number of states which form rotational band structure is thus limited. The
number of calculated rotational bands around 30 at a given angular momentum
agrees qualitatively with experimental data. The onset of rotational damping
takes place gradually as a function of excitation energy. It is shown that the
pairing correlation between valence nucleons has a significant effect on the
appearance of rotational damping.
