Thesis Work - Can we use machine learning to support predicting ageing in plastics?

About this opportunity - Background

Innovation starts with being curious. At Volvo Cars, we believe that being curious and truly committed to understanding people is the key to future success. We are looking for driven and motivated students interested in pursuing their master thesis within Vehicle Engineering during the spring term 2026.
At Vehicle Engineering, our responsibility spans the entire chassis, interior, climate, body & exterior functions, mechanical Integration and a range of vehicle attributes with impact on design and customer experience of our complete product. Across these domains and all development cycles we will lead an effective delivery operation on complete level in close sync with other Engineering units, functions and stakeholders across the company.

This thesis work is within the area of Polymer Materials at Material Engineering Center.

Background & Motivation

Polymers do age and this depends on application environment. Ageing tests in various environments are very time consuming and costly.
Common ageing method is in ovens at elevated temperatures and/or special chambers with for example humidity.  Mechanical testing is main method to visualize ageing effects preferably with removal intervals to identify trends.
Ageing is application dependent but in bulk cases heat and humidity are typical ageing acceleration factors. Ageing times are shortened by increasing the oven temperatures.

Objective

Including, but not limited to:
•    Benchmark of other methods/technologies 
•    Could we find indicators with short term tests which would predict ageing behavior?
•    Some would directly propose OIT (Oxidative Induction Time) but how does this correlate to ageing at usage temperatures?
•    Which analysis methods should be added to catch early changes
•    For this we would need a lot of data and a smart way of analyzing combinations.

Scope of the thesis work

Create a method to aid prediction of ageing in plastics. Volvo Cars has aged samples, and some analysis is already done which is machine readable.  Probably other analysis will be needed and incorporated to data base. Finding these analysing methods and coupling these to ageing is an important step as well as reviewing ongoing research and potential improvements to the proposed method.

What you'll bring

You are a Data Engineer with good knowledge in Machine Learning and good analytical skills. You have a strong interest in materials.

Duration

•    Tentative proposed thesis work period: 19th January 2026 to 26th of June 2026 (dates can be flexible with +/- 7 days)
•    The duration for this thesis work is 20 weeks.
•    30 ECTS (Master academic credits) in agreement with your Thesis Advisor in University
•    This thesis is to be conducted by 2 Students working in pair.