This paper presents a simulation and experimental study on the measurement with multiple cameras of the
flexural deflection shape of a beam excited by a transverse force at the fundamental resonance frequency,
which gives a good estimate of the first flexural natural mode shape. The first part of the study presents the
simplified optical model employed to simulate how the accuracy of the measurements vary with respect to:
a) the distance of the cameras from the structure; b) the elevation angles formed by the optical axes of the
cameras and the beam plane; c) the angle of aperture between pairs of cameras; d) the resolution of cameras
and e) the number of cameras. The second part of the study provides experimental results taken on a beam
rig and camera setup assembled using off the shelf devices. The study shows that multi-cameras setups with
low-resolution/high frame-rate cameras can be effectively employed to measure flexural vibrations of
distributed structures up to audio frequency ranges.
