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This paper describes a combination of simulation and experimentation to evaluate the advantages offered by utilizing a hexagonal shaped array element in a 2D NDE array structure. The active material is a 1–3 connectivity piezoelectric composite structure incorporating triangular shaped pillars—each hexagonal array element comprising six triangular pillars. A combination of PZFlex, COMSOL and Matlab has been used to simulate the behavior of this device microstructure, for operation around 2.25 MHz, with unimodal behavior and low levels of mechanical cross-coupling predicted. Furthermore, the application of hexagonal array elements enables the array aperture to increase by approximately 30%, compared to a conventional orthogonal array matrix and hence will provide enhanced volumetric coverage and SNR. Prototype array configurations demonstrate good corroboration of the theoretically predicted mechanical cross-coupling between adjacent array elements (∼23 dB). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]