The present paper addresses the optimal design of composite laminates with the aim of minimizing free-edge delamination stresses. A technique involving the application of particle swarm optimization (PSO) integrated with FEM was developed for the optimization. Optimization was also conducted with the zero-order method (ZOM) included in ANSYS. The semi-analytical method, which provides an approximation of the interlaminar normal stress of laminates under in-plane load, was used to partially validate the optimization results. It was found that optimal results based on ZOM are sensitive to the starting design points, and an unsuitable initial design set will lead to a result far from global solution. By contrast, the proposed method can find the global optimal solution regardless of initial designs, and the solutions were better than those obtained by ZOM in all the cases investigated.