Building collapse is frequently caused by crack development and propagation in reinforced concrete elements. Such catastrophic failures affect structural behaviour and may cause property and person harm. A thorough analysis of the fracture propagation is required. To study crack formation in a concrete part and detect fracture failure at an early stage, numerical approaches are being developed. However, in the investigation of shear fractures in reinforced concrete components, more research and action is necessary. The propagation of bending shear cracks in a concrete beam without transverse reinforcement is studied using numerical simulations and continuum mechanical models in this research. The extended finite element method (XFEM) is used as a numerical approach to map discrete fractures. The crack propagation is compared to the smeared crack propagation.