In order to study the shear capacity of reinforced concrete corbels，and evaluate the accuracy and safety of the design method of Chinese and abroad code，based on the collected test data of 209 corbels，the shear capacity formulas of ACI 318-19，EC2，CSA A23.3-04 as well as the main strut-and-tie models were evaluated. It was found that the calculation results of abroad code are too conservative，while the softened strut-and-tie model（SSTM） can better predict the shear capacity of corbel. On this basis，a series of reinforced concrete corbels were designed according to the Chinese code with various parameters including shear span，concrete strength，reinforcement strength，etc. By comparing the designed shear capacity with the calculation results of the softened strut-and-tie model，the accuracy and safety of Chinese code under different design parameters were analyzed. Then，the simplified formula of the modification factor of the corbel bearing capacity was proposed. Based on the collected test data，the simplified formula was proved to be accurate. Design suggestions were proposed for the corbels under shear load，which can be used as a reference for the design of reinforced concrete corbels.