This thesis deals with the changes of the critical properties of Nb3Sn superconductor induced by proton irradiation in order to estimate the lifetime of Nb3Sn quadrupole magnets in the HL-LHC accelerator. Industrial Nb3Sn wires were irradiated with high energy protons at 65MeV and 24GeV, up to 1.38×1021p/m2. Within these fluences, Tc exhibited a slight, linear decrease (~3%) and a small Bc2 increased (~ 5÷10%), while Jc showed a strong increase (up to 100%) due to the formation of radiation induced defects. A universal relationship Tc vs. dpa has been established to evaluate the ∆Tc under the operation conditions of the HL-LHC. To study the higher damage induced by charge particles at the location of the Bragg peak, 10 MeV proton irradiations up to 1.0×1022p/m2 were performed on Nb3Sn HIP platelets. Diffraction measures revealed that both the microstrains and the lattice constant increase while the Bragg Williams LRO parameter decreases.