Case Study: Kadant Johnson achieves lighter, stronger rotary-joint designs and 10× faster analysis with SolidWorks Simulation

Kadant - Customer Case Study

Kadant Johnson Corporation (Kadant), a global leader in rotary joints and precision unions for process industries, needed to quickly optimize a rotary joint and syphon assembly used in the dryer section of high-speed papermaking machines. Refining the design with hand calculations and their former FEA tools would have been too slow, so Kadant turned to SolidWorks, using SolidWorks Simulation (along with SolidWorks Flow Simulation, Workgroup PDM and other SolidWorks products) to enable fast, integrated analysis directly from their CAD models.

Using SolidWorks, the engineering team ran integrated stress and flow simulations to evaluate liquid-filled, pressure-loaded parts, which cut analysis time to one‑tenth of their previous FEA package and reduced design iterations. The result was a stronger, lighter, more durable assembly with maximized flow capacity and a smaller envelope; Kadant achieved a substantial weight reduction and delivered the optimized product in a fraction of the normal development time, and now applies SolidWorks Simulation across new and existing designs.

Kadant

Alan Ives

Director of Product Development Industry: Machinery