How this is implemented will differ a little for a keyword type search. Instead of adding it into the $WADbSearch1->keywordComparison part of the code you would add it into the $KeyArr variable like this:
$KeyArr1 = array("REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(ItemName,'-', ''),' ', ''), '/', '')");
I added in the extra replace to account for the slash also. So if your column was named ItemName this is how the $KeyArr variable should look. If you have multiple instances of them then you will need to add this into each $KeyArr variable.
What this code is doing is looking for instances of a dash, a space, and a slash. If found it will replace them with an empty string. This will in effect allow your searches to be performed on the values minus these special chars. The results that are returned will be the same as they appear in the db. This adjustment is only for searching through the values.