  The presence of a spectral softening, occurring at 3 PeV energies, seen in
the local cosmic-ray energy spectrum provides an evidence that our Galaxy hosts
astrophysical objects, known as hadronic PeVatrons, that are capable of
accelerating hadrons to PeV energies and above. Recent results from
ground-based particle detector array experiments have provided conclusive
evidence that these facilities are essential to explore the ultra-high-energy
(UHE, E>100 TeV) domain and pinpoint the location of PeVatrons in the Galaxy.
The Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) is proposed
next-generation ground-based extensive air shower observatory, which holds
great scientific potential for UHE observations. In this study, we investigate
the expected potential of SWGO to search for hadronic PeVatrons, based on the
publicly available preliminary SWGO straw-man IRFs. It can be shown that the
SWGO detection of gamma-ray spectral cutoffs between 30 TeV and 100 TeV is
possible for faint gamma-ray sources of 5~mCrab given that the spectral index
is hard ($\Gamma$<2.0), while spectral cutoffs from softer sources with
$\Gamma$=2.3 can be detected for sources brighter than 11-12 mCrab. The
reconstructed SWGO PeVatron detection maps demonstrate that the future SWGO
experiment can probe large parts of the investigated PeVatron parameter space,
providing a robust detection and/or rejection of presence of spectral
signatures associated with hadronic PeVatrons. A dedicated study on the
promising PeVatron candidates, the Galactic Center region, Westerlund~1,
HESSJ1702-420 and HESSJ1641-463, shows that the SWGO will have a great
potential to confirm or exclude PeVatron nature of these candidate sources at a
robust significance level after 5-years of observation. In addition, it is
shown that controlling systematic errors will be necessary to reach full
potential of the SWGO experiment for PeVatron searches.
