The determination of shear capacity of structural members without shear reinforcement in light of fracture mechanics has been a growing research interest ever since fracture mechanics theory for quasi-brittle materials including concrete has been developed.rnIn relations to fracture mechanics, size effect in reinforced concrete members is a phenomenon that is observed in experiments carried out to determine the load carrying capacity of structural members. With-increasing sizes of members, shear capacity is known to decrease at larger scale. It is the key objective of this research to assess whether or not such effect has been incorporated in the strength based approaches followed in the revised Ethiopian Building code and the building code by the American Concrete Institute. Furthermore, the research is aimed to evaluate the prediction power in the fracture mechanics based theories and have a further look into the strength based theories of analysis which, according to this researchâ€Ÿs findings, fail to incorporate the size effect.rnThis research selects 5 shear critical beams and uses the two building codes to estimate their shear capacity. After which a finite element model is prepared using the software ATENA 2D incorporating fracture mechanics based modeling techniques for the purpose of estimating the shear capacity of the same 5 beams examined using the building codes. From this study it was concluded that the two building codes lack to take the size effect into account and give a prediction that does not match experimental findings, especially for larger beam cross-section.rnThis study is not enough on its own to evaluate the lackings behind the shear capacity prediction formulas given by the two codes. Due to the fact that this research only has one variable parameter in the study, it is highly suggested that further researches be conducted in order to accurately test the fracture mechanics based theories and reconsider the code based approaches.