Abstract: Cure-induced residual stresses are usually unavoidable due to anisotropic properties of composite materials, which have great influence on following machining and assembly process. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the distribution of cure-induced residual stresses in the materials for high performance composite part manufacturing. The traditional slitting method used for residual stresses assessment was analyzed and deformations caused by the slitting process were divided into two groups. One was caused by the release of cure-induced residual stresses and the other was by gravity. After the partial deformation caused by gravity being obtained by using finite element analysis, relationship between the remained deformation and the cure-induced residual stresses was set up by using bending deformation theory, which was used to evaluate the distribution of cure-induced residual stresses. Experimental results show that the proposed method can obtain the same distribution as that of the traditional slitting method and the difference may less than 14% when a proper measurement point is selected.