History and design of major structures
Lino Gentilini's engineering career began at the Comitato Nazionale per le Ricerche Nucleari in Ispra, near Milan, and the Comitato Nazionale per l'Energia Nucleare at Casaccia, near Rome, where from 1958 he developed a nuclear reactor simulator and designed the internal structures of the Cirene reactor.
From the early nineteen-sixties, at Sepi in Trento, he designed more than a thousand civil infrastructures, concentrating above all on bridges and viaducts, and published widely on prestressed reinforced concrete. At Sepi he also founded one of the first computing centres for civil engineering, writing bridge analysis codes for the IBM 1130 and IBM 370-145.
Working in an inventive spirit, and always looking for solutions in keeping with their setting, his motorway projects include all the bridges and viaducts of the A22 Brenner motorway (among them the viaducts at Ponticolo, Colle Isarco, Ceppara, Fortezza, Campodazzo, Micheletti and Bolzano, and the bridge over the Po); the A21 Brescia-Cremona-Piacenza motorway (the Castelvetro bridge and its overpasses); the Zagreb-Split and Zagreb-Belgrade motorways; the Sarajevo-Adriatic motorway; the third lane of the Brescia-Padua motorway; structures on the A14, A23, A26 and A27; and the ring roads of Ravenna, Reggio Emilia, Trieste, Verona, Vicenza, Trento, Riva del Garda, Veggia and Sassuolo, Arco, Bassano, Mantua, Brescia and Bolzano-Merano.
On the state road network he designed structures for numerous stretches: the SS 7 near Ciampino; the SS 12 at Colle Isarco, Campodazzo, Prato Isarco, Bolzano, Rovereto, Marco, Lavis, Trento and Calliano; the SS 9 near Reggio Emilia; the SS 347 between Agordo and Fiera di Primiero; the SS 38 between Merano and Avelengo; the SS 237 between Cimego and Darzo, between Limaro and Comano, and near Sarche; the SS 36 near Lecco; the SS 508 near Sarentino; the SS 49 near Sciaves; the SS 47 between Ponte Alto, Pergine and S. Cristoforo and near Bassano and Solagna; the SS 248 near Marostica; the SS 45bis between Trento and Cadine and near Arco; the SS 113 near Termini Imerese; the SS 43 between Rocchetta and Mollaro; the SS 42 between Male and Dimaro; the SS 621 in the Aurina valley; and the SP 90 at La Rupe.
On the railways his work includes the preliminary study for the Brenner base tunnel and the design of the railway bridges at Bolzano Sud, Fortezza, Perca and Fleres. Among buildings and industrial plant: the faculty of economics in Trento, the parliament complex in Lagos, commercial buildings in Port Moresby, two sugar storage terminals at Lautoka and Malau in Fiji, the Samatzai cement works in Sardinia, the refurbishment of the cement works at Isole delle Femmine and Vibo Valentia, the extension of the Riva del Garda paper mills, the ITALSI prestressed concrete plants in Trento, CMC at Pievesestina and VIADUKT at Pojatno in Croatia, and the intermodal freight terminal in Trento.
