Due to their amazing properties such as their ability to travel faster than sound, shockwaves are one of the most efficient mechanisms of energy transfer. They are generally present in supersonic or hypersonic flows while flowing over or through any object. Thus, the application of shockwaves can be seen in several engineering systems in aerospace domain, such as the surfaces of transonic and supersonic flights, missiles, rockets, space shuttles, re-entry vehicles, engine intakes of supersonic aircraft, etc. where flows travel at transonic speeds.  Apart from the aerospace domain, the applications of shockwaves are seen in several industrial and medical systems. Explosive welding, sandalwood oil extraction, pencil manufacturing industry and metal forming are some of the areas where shockwaves are used effectively in industrial domains.

For the design of these engineering systems, it is important to understand the properties and behaviour of the shockwaves. The wind tunnels intended for testing have limitations in generating the supersonic flows at realistic test conditions and capturing the shockwaves for physical study (Anderson, 1990). These restrictions can be overcome with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis.

Shockwaves can be predicted precisely by using the adaptive mesh technology in the CFD analysis (ANSYS, Inc, 2009). The new CFD methodology based on adaptive mesh technology has shown good convergence with good accuracy in the flow solution. CFD engineers are encouraged to implement this methodology in any similar supersonic or hypersonic analysis and to use the adaptive mesh technology to capture the shockwaves precisely. The methodology can also be adapted to other engineering applications in industrial, manufacturing and medical domains. This paper discusses about CFD analysis done on wedge, cone, space-shuttle and double-wedge geometries, along with a case study to arrive at the best CFD methodology to capture the shockwaves.