The ternary Ni-W-P coating was prepared on mild steel (1015) and the corrosion-fouling relationship was investigated. Meantime, the Ni-W-P coatings were characterized in terms of their properties and surface morphology by means of scanning electron microscope (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD) and electrochemical station. The result of fouling experiment shows that the Ni-W-P coating has better anti-fouling property than the uncoated mild steel surface. Additionally, both of the samples with or without Ni-W-P coating contain formation of calcites and aragonites in the same condition in the study. The uncoated mild steel adheres more aragonites while more calcites deposits on the surface of Ni-W-P coating. The corrosion experiment shows that due to the less corrosion cracks and pits producing, the Ni-W-P coating surface in different immersion stage inhibits the adhesion of fouling effectively compared with the uncoated mild steel surface. Furthermore, the phase structures of fouling are affected by the corrosion of samples with or without Ni-W-P coating differently due to the metal ions generated by corrosion. The work provides techniques that the corrosion resistance and anti-fouling performance should be combined to use when we apply surface modification in the fields of heat transfer.

Engineering surface shows fractal characteristics, and mechanical performance of electroless Ni–W–P coating with fractal parameters can avoid the effects of instrument resolution and sampling length. In the present work, the ternary Ni–W–P coatings were deposited on mild steel (1015) polished with various sandpapers. Surface morphology of coating and mechanical property, including matrix roughness, adhesion strength, friction behavior and elastic modulus were investigated by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and MFT-4000 multifunctional material surface performance instrument, respectively. The results present that the mechanical property of the electroless Ni–W–P coating is affected by the fractal features. The stress in the direction of matrix surface is considered to decrease due to the rougher matrix. Meanwhile, the elements are prone to be deposited and the adhesion strength between Ni–W–P coating and matrix is seen to increase. The experiments also indicate that the friction coefficient of coating reduces as the fractal dimension of coating increase. However, the regularity of the relationship between fractal dimension and elastic modulus of Ni–W–P coating is inconspicuous while the elastic modulus is mainly affected by its own chemical component. The work provides evidence that the fractal dimension has a significant influence on the mechanical property of the electroless Ni–W–P coating.