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Smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a computational method for modeling fluids (hydrodynamics) developed by Lucy, Gingold, and Monaghan in 1977, that represents fluids as many dispersed particles, simulating their dynamics incorporating mathematical techniques that smooth the results. The GADGET-2 astrophysical N-body simulator also includes SPH to model gas.
Fluids do consist of many particles (molecules or atoms), but far more than could be handled individually by computation. SPH models fluids with a much smaller number of particles, but enough to model the overall fluid flows. The mathematical "smoothing" assists in modelling actual fluid flows with such a reduced number of particles.
Variations on the concept are used to model the outcome of impacts.