Significant hoop and longitudinal stresses are present in medium-density polyethylene (MDPE) pipe, arising from differential cooling from the inner and the outer surfaces of a pipe during production. Owing to the difficulty of directly measuring deformations, these stresses have hitherto been almost exclusively estimated indirectly from deflection measurements on large samples cut from the pipe wall. Furthermore, because of procedural problems, only uniaxial hoop or longitudinal stresses are normally attempted, and these are known to be specimen size-dependent. Similar problems are experienced with other polymeric pipes. In this paper, based on direct biaxial strain measurements on small samples cut from the pipe wall, a method to predict triaxial residual stress distributions through the pipe wall is presented. Thermal effects that generate residual stresses in plastic pipe were considered in the theory. The analytical solutions satisfy the self-equilibrating conditions for both the hoop and the longitudinal stresses. Also, the radial stress is shown to be insignificant through the wall thickness of a mildly thick pipe. (C) 2004 Society of Plastics Engineers.