The first Goodwood Ghost demonstrated that cocooning, near-silent acoustic properties were of the utmost importance, creating the sense of calm and wellness that Rolls-Royce clients savour.
For new Ghost, the marque’s team of acoustic specialists were obsessive in taking this to the next level, adapting the marque’s proprietary aluminium spaceframe architecture, which itself offers benefits owing to the metal’s higher acoustic impedance compared with steel and its use of complex forms rather than flat, resonant surfaces, creating a double-skinned bulkhead section to insulate the cabin from the already near-silent 6.75-litre V12 engine and cavities in the roof, boot and floor which were then filled with more than 100kg of sound-absorbing materials.
Additionally, double-glazed windows with a clear composite centre sheet were used as well as tyres lined with lightweight acoustic insulation foam.
Once the sound stage was created, every component was obsessively interrogated for its acoustic properties. Those that produced unacceptable levels of noise were discarded and completely redesigned at the Home of Rolls-Royce in Goodwood, West Sussex, to better serve the client’s desire for serenity. Even the inside of the air conditioning ducts were smoothed to better insulate clients from intrusive noises.
Ghost – ‘tuned’ to perfection
Knowing that removing all noise was disorientating, the Rolls-Royce solution was to create a ‘whisper’ – a soft undertone that clients experienced as a single, subtle note. To achieve this, each component had to be tuned to a common resonant frequency. This task included creating acoustically tuned damping units for the seat frames, as well as a suite of ports between the cabin and the large 500-litre boot to ensure that it generated a frequency consistent with new Ghost’s ‘note’.
The marque’s experts named this exhaustive process the ‘Formula for Serenity’. These insights are conveyed by the contemporary medium of animated illustrations. Rendered first by renowned illustrator, Charlie Davis, they were animated to cohesively and beautifully represent these findings in a fashion that befits the highly progressive new Ghost.
In addition to these insights presented in animation form, a series of five podcasts have been launched that reveal more of the marque’s findings, as well as insights into the underlying material and engineering substance of new Ghost in long form.
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