In order to improve the effective load of an unmanned helicopter, a new blade shape with a new airfoil section, non-linear negative twist, varied chord length and double-swept blade tip was designed by employing a CFD method coupled with an optimization method. Firstly, a new airfoil is designed with improved aerodynamic characteristics. By comparing the numerical data, the new airfoil has better lift-drag ratio, i.e., the maximum lift-drag ratio increases from 63.03 to 66.29 at Mach number of 0.3 and from 70.17 to 72.13 at Mach number of 0.4, compared with the original NACA8H12 airfoil. In addition, a new blade shape is designed based on the new airfoil. By comparing the numerical data, the CT of the design rotor increases from 4.79×10−3 to 5.07×10−3, and the maximum FM increases from 0.67 to 0.72 at the design state. After that, a verification test is performed in hovering flight. The test data indicated the a maxumu thrust increase of 3.18% at the design state. Meanwhile, the FM of design rotor is improved about 3.41% compared with the original rotor.