How do steel fibers improve the shear capacity of reinforced concrete beams without stirrups?

Even though the structural behavior steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) has been extensively researched, structural applications are still limited. One barrier to its implementation is the lack of mechanical models that describe the behaviour of SFRC members failing in shear. This paper reviews the effect of steel fibers on the different mechanisms of shear transfer and combines the observations from the literature regarding the parameters that affect the shear capacity of SFRC. Additionally, a selection of currently available expressions for the shear capacity of SFRC is presented. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art on the shear capacity of SFRC elements without shear reinforcement, shows the lacks in our current understanding on the shear behaviour of SFRC elements without shear reinforcement, and outlines the steps necessary to address these lacks. The presented work aims to be a framework for (experimental) efforts addressing the shear capacity of SFRC members without shear reinforcement.