Abstract: The mechanical performance of the cutterhead of composite shield machines is an important criteria to judge whether the structure design is reasonable. In this paper, the force property of the composite cutterhead is analyzed by finite element method, the contours of stress and deformation distribution are obtained. As for the main load bearing parts with insufficient safety margin, the high strength steel is used to instead, and finally the parameters are optimized through the DesignXplorer module of Workbench. The safety coefficient of the optimized cutterhead is 1.54, and the weight is reduced by 1.17 tons, so the safety and economy of the composite cutterhead are improved.The research results can provide reference for structure design and material selection of the shield cutterhead.