We present a 2-dimensional chemical evolution code applied to a Milky Way type galaxy , incorporating the role of spiral arms in shaping azimuthal abundance variations , and confront the predicted behaviour with recent observations taken with integral field units .
To the usual radial distribution of mass , we add the surface density of the spiral wave and study its effect on star formation and elemental abundances .
We compute five different models : one with azimuthal symmetry which depends only on radius , while the other four are subjected to the effect of a spiral density wave .
At early times , the imprint of the spiral density wave is carried by both the stellar and star formation surface densities ; conversely , the elemental abundance pattern is less affected .
At later epochs , however , differences among the models are diluted , becoming almost indistinguishable given current observational uncertainties .
At the present time , the largest differences appear in the star formation rate and/or in the outer disc ( R \geq 18 kpc ) .
The predicted azimuthal oxygen abundance patterns for t \leq 2 Gyr are in reasonable agreement with recent observations obtained with VLT/MUSE for NGC 6754 .