MacCormacks explicit time-marching scheme is used to solve the full Navier-Stokes unsteady, compressible equations for internal flows. The requirement of a very fine grid to capture shock as well as separated flows is circumvented by employing grid clustering. The numerical scheme is applied for axisymmetric as well as two-dimensional flows. Numerical predictions are compared with experimental data and the qualitative as well as the quantitative agreement is found to be quite satisfactory. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.