  The most important part of a railgun launch package is the armature where the
electromagnetic force is generated leading to the acceleration of the launch
package. In case of metal armatures, the most commonly used armature types are
the C-shape and the multi-fiber brush technology. However, rarely both armature
types were systematically compared under similar experimental conditions. That
is why we constructed launch packages based on the C-shaped and brush armature
technology with comparable armature and payload mass. With these launch
packages a series of experiments were performed in an energy range between 0.8
MJ and 1.13 MJ corresponding to a speed range between 950 m/s and 1400 m/s. The
results of the experiments were then analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
On the one hand our results show that the total losses are higher for the
C-shaped armature technology than for the brush aramture technology. On the
other hand our results show that launch packages based on the C-shaped
technology convert better electrical energy into kinetic energy.
