Abstract In the course of renovating egg-shaped sewer linings, comparisons of stress/strain and deflection levels with their permissible values are complicated not only by their shape but also by their considerably variable material properties and the choice of intermediate restraint set-ups. Thus, the present attempt to model numerically two glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) linings (one of them segmental) and one glass-reinforced cement (GRC) lining (segmental) by using actual material data and structural test results carried out under uniform pressure aims at the validation of a suitable finite element model as a design tool capable of encompassing a wide range of parameters. These include arbitrary lining geometries, material properties, boundary restraint set-ups, and different load configurations resulting from the way in which the grouting pressure is applied.