An experimental study on critical bed shear-stress for initial movement of non-cohesive sediment particles under a steady-uniform stream flow on a combined lateral (across the flow direction) and longitudinal (streamwise direction) sloping bed is presented. The aim of this paper is to ascertain that the critical bed shear-stress on a combined lateral and longitudinal sloping bed is adequately represented by the product of critical bed shear-stress ratios for lateral and longitudinal sloping beds. Experiments were carried out with closed-conduit flow, in two ducts having a semicircular invert section, with three sizes of sediments. In laboratory flumes, the uniform flow is a difficult - if not impossible - proposition for a steeply sloping channel, and is impossible to obtain in an adversely sloping channel. To avoid this problem, the experiments were conducted with a closed-conduit flow. The critical bed shear-stresses for experimental runs were estimated from side-wall correction. The experimental data agree satisfactorily with the results obtained from the proposed formula. © IWA Publishing 2004.