A systematic study has been performed, investigating the radiation damage in high purity low doped silicon. During this study we irradiated bulk silicon samples and silicon detectors manufactured from the same bulk material. Identical series of samples (bulk and detectors) were irradiated with different projectiles: swift heavy ions, neutrons and electrons. The characterization of the samples has been performed with different experimental techniques: DLTS, Hall effect, photoluminescence, current–voltage I(V) and capacitance–voltage C(V) measurements. These measurements allow us to extract some quantitative informations about the radiation damage, in particular the introduction rates of vacancy-doping and divacancy complexes, and also the leakage current damage constant for irradiated detectors. In order to explain the macroscopic damage starting from the microscopic one, we calculate for each projectile a set of parameters: electronic energy loss, nuclear energy loss, total displacement cross-section, number of primary knocked-out atoms, displacement cascade size, density of energy deposited in a cascade by nuclear collisions. The experimental results suggest a way to explain the differences between the radiation damage effects of the different projectiles, taking into account the incidence of the above stated microscopic parameters. A comparison is made with the results obtained by other authors concerning the radiation damage of fullerene-irradiated silicon.