  Purpose: This study aims to assess the robustness and accuracy of the
face-centred finite volume (FCFV) method for the simulation of compressible
laminar flows in different regimes, using numerical benchmarks.
  Design/methodology/approach: The work presents a detailed comparison with
reference solutions published in the literature -- when available -- and
numerical results computed using a commercial cell-centred finite volume
software.
  Findings: The FCFV scheme provides first-order accurate approximations of the
viscous stress tensor and the heat flux, insensitively to cell distortion or
stretching. The strategy demonstrates its efficiency in inviscid and viscous
flows, for a wide range of Mach numbers, also in the incompressible limit. In
purely inviscid flows, non-oscillatory approximations are obtained in the
presence of shock waves. In the incompressible limit, accurate solutions are
computed without pressure correction algorithms. The method shows its superior
performance for viscous high Mach number flows, achieving physically admissible
solutions without carbuncle effect and predictions of quantities of interest
with errors below 5%.
  Originality/value: The FCFV method accurately evaluates, for a wide range of
compressible laminar flows, quantities of engineering interest, such as drag,
lift and heat transfer coefficients, on unstructured meshes featuring distorted
and highly stretched cells, with an aspect ratio up to ten thousand. The method
is suitable to simulate industrial flows on complex geometries, relaxing the
requirements on mesh quality introduced by existing finite volume solvers and
alleviating the need for time-consuming manual procedures for mesh generation
to be performed by specialised technicians.
