Abstract: Composite materials are widely used in aerospace and other fields, and the lightweight design becomes a research focus. The quality optimization design of composite laminates can reduce the fiber consumption, the quality requirement and the cost of the laminates. Firstly, the deformation and stress diagrams of composite laminates under axial load are studied, and the failure prone parts are analyzed; taking the ply thickness as design variables, the maximum strain and the ply ratio as constraints, the optimization objective is to minimize the laminate quality, the ply thickness and other design variables of the carbon fiber composite laminates are optimized, and the optimization results are checked by the strength theory. The mechanical properties of the composite laminates before and after optimization are compared and analyzed by mechanical tests. The results show that the total weight of the carbon fiber composite laminates is reduced by about 16.7% after optimization. The optimized laminates can meet all requirements of the strength theory of composite materials. The experimental results are consistent with the software simulation, which shows that the optimization method is reasonable and reliable.