In the authors' previous study, the dual potential capacity model (DPCM) was proposed to evaluate the shear strengths of reinforced concrete (RC) members, in which the shear contributions of both the cracked tension zone and the compression zone are considered. In this paper, the main concept and formulations of the proposed DPCM were briefly introduced, and the simplified DPCM was developed for the practical application of the proposed model. A total of 1019 data sets of shear test results on RC members were collected for detailed verifications of the detailed and simplified DPCM. The verification results demonstrated that the proposed models can appropriately assess the effects of key influential factors including compressive strength of concrete, shear span‐to‐depth ratio, size of coarse aggregate, sizes of members, and shear reinforcement on the shear strengths of RC members.