The flow process inside a pressure regulating valve has been investigated using a computational fluid dynamic approach. The Navier-Stokes equation along with appropriate turbulent closure has been solved for this purpose in the compressible flow regime using FLUENT package. Investigations of the flow through valve at different valve opening and different pressure drop are presented. The standard k-epsilon model of turbulence was found to predict higher levels of turbulent kinetic energy and hence the realizable variant of k-epsilon model was adopted for turbulence closure. Within the operating zone, it is found that two-dimensional axi-symmetric formulation can capture the gross flow parameters quite well. However, for complete realization of the turbulent field, three dimensional analyses assume importance. The realizable k-epsilon model was found to be an attractive option for turbulence modeling. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.