To place concrete overlays has become a standard application in the strengthening and rehabilitation of concrete structures such as bridges, tunnels, parking decks and industrial buildings. In general, connectors are used to ensure a monolithic behavior of the two concrete layers. Within the framework of the development of a new connector wedge splitting tests and shear tests were performed, in addition nonlinear finite element analyses were applied to investigate the load transfer behavior of the connectors for different prototypes. The numerical simulation results were compared to experimental data. The computed load-displacement curve demonstrates good correspondence with the curves obtained in the experiments, and the experimental crack patterns are reasonably simulated by the computed crack propagation. Both numerical and experimental investigations on the wedge splitting test and on the shear test served as basis for the development of new type of connectors.