After the launch of the new Ghost, Rolls-Royce made a great deal out of the state-of-the-art Planar Suspension system. The manufacturer spent several years on the research and testing in order to design the new suspension setup. Finally, this setup was made part of the new Ghost. Although it is a new setup, it became quite popular among the users. In this article, we are going to talk about how this suspension system works. Plus, we will find out why it is so special. Read on.
Basically, this system is quite simple but brilliant. In simple words, what this setup does is use the mass in order to dampen out minor vibrations from the road.
The two primary types of bumps that get dampened out are high-frequency and low-frequency vibrations. Low-frequency bumps involve lots of suspension travel. For this purpose, this suspension is a good choice, especially with setups that have the ability to scan the road and get the suspension system ready a few seconds ahead of the pump. This type of system is already built-in in Rolls Royce Ghost.
But the problem is that it is difficult to handle high-frequency bumps. These little bumps transfer high-frequency vibrations via the tires and wheels. Rolls-Royce knew that the air suspension system was good enough to handle low frequency, but the high frequency was trickier to handle. Therefore, the manufacturer came up with a better solution.
Basically, the Planar Suspension is like a damper unit. It is fixed to the pre-existing suspension upper wishbone. Besides, the extra damper unit is fixed on and underneath it. Besides, it features rubber bump stops that are connected to the damper unit. Again, they are connected to the upper wishbone. As a result, this setup can deal with high-frequency vibrations very easily.
So, all this setup can improve the ride significantly. The special damper unit has two functions to perform. First, it helps smother small vibrations due to its mass since there is a difference between weight and mass.
For example, your mass does not change whether you are standing on the moon or on earth. However, your weight will be considerably different on different planets because of the gravity factor. So, what we want to say is that the mass of an object has a significant impact on the degree of resistance it exerts to the force. Therefore, if you add mass to the vehicle suspension system, it can help reduce the vibration significantly.
Apart from the mass, this setup has bump stops that help absorb any vibrations coming via the current upper wishbone.
Therefore, the manufacturer did not use a complex system for the Ghost. Instead, they used physics rules in order to make a simple but inexpensive system to deal with the tiny vibrations that annoyed passengers in the cabin.
In short, this was a simple explanation of how the new Rolls-Royce Ghost Planar Suspension works.
