Abundance Gradients and Chemical Evolution of Spiral Galaxies

The distribution of chemical abundances and their variation in space and time are important tools to understand the chemical evolution of disks in spiral galaxies. In this work we present an one infall chemical evolution model for the Galactic disk based on an updated version of the Trieste group model. We adopted a pre enriched gas (to take into account the effect of the halo evolution), an inside-out scenario for the formation of the disk and a threshold in the surface gas density to regulate the star formation rate. The observational constraints for the solar neighbourhood were well reproduced and the spatial and time evolution of the radial abundance gradient were studied. We also used this model to reproduce the chemical evolution of some nearby spiral galaxies. The model was scaled to the disk properties of each galaxy and its dependence with the star formation efficiency and the time scale for the infalling gas into the disk were explored. Using this modified model we were able to reproduce the observed constraints available in the literature for this galaxies. The similarities and the differences between the chemical evolution of these objects and teh Milky Way are discussed to provide a basis to the understanding of the chemical evolution of disks.