Abstract: The ultrasonic guided wave technology was successfully used for the detection of strands with fractured wires at a single position. However, in practice, wires comprising the strand often fracture in several places. In such a case, the propagation of guided waves was very complicated because of the special structure of the strand and many fractured surfaces. In this paper, a strand with three fractured surfaces in a wire was used as the specimen, and a method was proposed to study propagation characteristics of guided waves by acquiring signals from the strand under different experimental conditions. At last, the attenuation of the passing pulse signals and the change of the defect signals were analyzed. Results show that due to the contact stresses between the wires guided waves propagation in a strand can not be reflected completely when they encounter a fractured surface in a wire. While the forward energy of guided waves decreases, and then waves continue propagating simultaneously in the fractured wire and other wires because of the energy losses between these wires, which is helpful to inspect other defects in the same wire. The conclusion provides a certain foundation for application of guided waves technology to detect the strand with fractured wires in different places.