Case Study: Kimberly‑Clark achieves faster, more accurate dust‑mask fit evaluation with Dassault Systèmes' SIMULIA (Abaqus FEA)

Movie-making tools help drive a virtual product evaluation using Abaqus FEA

Kimberly-Clark faced the challenge of designing a comfortable, airtight dust mask that must conform to a moving, deformable human face. To address complex contact and sealing behavior during facial motion, Kimberly-Clark teamed with Dassault Systemes, using SIMULIA’s Abaqus FEA and motion‑capture inputs to represent realistic facial movement as a boundary condition in simulation.

Dassault Systemes helped implement a workflow that turned high‑resolution motion‑capture point clouds into an Abaqus orphan mesh, drove a global/submodel simulation of the face and duckbill® dust mask, and computed contact pressure over time. The Abaqus FEA results revealed specific gapping and low‑pressure regions (notably around the nose), enabling Kimberly‑Clark to identify design changes earlier, reduce the number of physical prototypes and focus human testing on finalists—demonstrating measurable reductions in design exploration and faster product development.

Kimberly-Clark

Chris Pieper

Associate Research Fellow