Composite Beams

Hello all,
Good to see the forums are still ticking along, It's been a while since I've had a question for you all and here it is:
Have any of you used composite, or keyed beams before, and had them engineered?
I've been chatting with my engineer and he does not have experience with these.
The situation that has sparked my quest for information was having a beam in one of my current designs spec'd out at 10"x15", which will be difficult for the client to find. I could probably go ahead and design something for my engineer to review, but if he and I are both inexperienced with the subject it may get expensive!
I will include a couple of photos for reference.
thanks in advance.

Hello Mark,

Good to see your post and know your still out in the world building...



Yes, of sorts, and built a few...

I'm not a fan of composite for historical and dedication to craft reasons, but "Keyed Beams" have been around in some form for well over 1000 years...and I love them!!!

My friend and a member of the fine team of Engineers at Fire Tower Engineered Timber wrote his PhD thesis on "Keyed Beams." I think I have a copy of it and something else in PDF form if you want to shoot me an email...But better yet Call Joe Miller at FTET and get it from the horse's mouth...

Good luck and post pictures of the project...

P.S. the picture links don't seem to be working for me...???

thanks Jay,
I have emailed you.
I've been wanting for some time to have an alternative to large section timbers which seem to happen fairly regularly these days.
I can see the images, but dont worry, they are just some stuff pulled from a google search....

Here is one image I will try Imgur this time rather than photobucket: