AbstractIn steel‐concrete composite girders, innovative composite dowels can be used to transfer the shear forces between the concrete slab and the steel section. Today, composite dowels are predominately used in engineering structures such as prefabricated composite bridges. However, due to their ease of manufacture, good loadbearing and deformation properties and suitability for slender concrete slabs, these composite dowels are being used more than ever in building construction as well. The present article describes shear tests on puzzle‐shaped composite dowels for slender concrete slabs with a depth of only 10 cm. Aside from different reinforcement configurations, the influence of different longitudinal stress states and transverse cracking in the concrete slab have been investigated. In previous studies of the shear force capacity of composite dowels, the influence of transverse cracking has been neglected. However, our own experiments described in this paper show that the shear capacity of composite dowels is significantly affected by concrete cracking. In order to simulate the experiments performed and to analyse the shear behaviour of the composite dowels in cracked and uncracked concrete, a three‐dimensional, non‐linear finite element model of the shear tests was set up. The results of both the experimental and numerical investigations are summarized in this paper.