In the present work irradiation experiments of gallium nitride (GaN) with 308MeV 129Xe35+2.3MeV 20Ne8+ and 5.0MeV 84Kr19+ respectively were performed. The irradiation dose was 5×1012ions/cm2,1×1013ions/cm2,3×1013ions/cm2 to 308MeV 129Xe35+ , 1×1011ions/cm2, 1×1012ions/cm2,1×1013ions/cm2,1×1014ions/cm2,1×1015ions/cm2 to 2.3MeV 20Ne8+,and 1×1011ions/cm2,1×1012ions/cm2,1×1013ions/cm2 to 5.0MeV 84Kr19+. And the irradiated samples were investigated with the high-resolution X-ray diffraction spectrometry (HRXRD),Raman spectrometry and UV-Vis spectrometry. It was found that in the experiments of GaN irradiated with 2.3MeV 20Ne8+ and 5.0MeV 84Kr19+,GaN lattice swelled with the irradiation increasing. In the whole range of irradiation, there were swelling areas with different . The swelling degree answered the damage degree, It was the nuclear energy loss which caused the crystal damage and was the main reason of the stress introduced in GaN, GaN seemed to be non-sensitive to electrical energy loss less than 3keV/nm/ion. As the lattice damage was mainly caused by nuclear energy loss, the accumulation density of nuclear energy loss decided the damage degree.While the dpa is below 0.032, defects in GaN was mainly point defects, lattice constant c increased linearly with the dpa increasing, but it showed a slower trend when the dpa become greater than 0.032; dpa=0.032 seemed to be the threshold value that point defects defect type began to transform from simple type to complicated type, if the irradiation dose increased from that dpa, point defects caused by irradiation would migrate and cluster together in GaN under the driving force of dynamic annealing, which would slow the trend of the swelling of GaN irradiated by ions. For the 308MeV 129Xe35+ irradiation, under the same energy accumulation density, it was found that the accumulation of 28keV/nm/ion electrical energy loss caused much greater damage than the accumulation of nuclear energy loss, which meaned that GaN was much more sensitive to electrical energy loss of high-energy heavy ions than to nuclear energy loss of low-energy ions.