I'm trying to quickly learn as much as I can about composite timber piles and typical construction practices. Anybody have any good references that they can recommend?
Chellis has a page on it in Leonards Foundation Engineering book (1962). You might try to find Chellis' original book on piles - it is very good and you learn things that you don't read about anymore . . . but I don't have it, sadly.
It's a building structure. I've got a site with very poor soils all the way down to about 80'-90' feet where there is a dense sand layer. The piles needs to resists minor amounts of lateral load per pile and some will be subject to tension.