This paper presents an implementation of an improved smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method for numerical simulation of free-surface flow problems. The presented SPH method involves two major modifications on the traditional SPH method: (1) kernel gradient correction (KGC) and density correction to improve the computational accuracy in particle approximation and (2) RANS turbulence model to capture the inherent physics of flow turbulence. In the simulation, artificial compressibility for modeling incompressible fluid and ghost particles for treating solid boundaries are both applied. The presented SPH has been applied to two dam-breaking problems. We demonstrated that the presented SPH method has very good performance with more accurate flow patterns and pressure field distribution.;This paper presents an implementation of an improved smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method for numerical simulation of free-surface flow problems. The presented SPH method involves two major modifications on the traditional SPH method: (1) kernel gradient correction (KGC) and density correction to improve the computational accuracy in particle approximation and (2) RANS turbulence model to capture the inherent physics of flow turbulence. In the simulation, artificial compressibility for modeling incompressible fluid and ghost particles for treating solid boundaries are both applied. The presented SPH has been applied to two dam-breaking problems. We demonstrated that the presented SPH method has very good performance with more accurate flow patterns and pressure field distribution.