  For several decades now, open clusters have been used to study the structure
and chemical evolution of the disk of our Galaxy. Due to the fact that their
ages and metallicities can be determined with relatively good precision, and
since they can be observed even at great distances, they are excellent tracers
of the variations in the abundance of heavy chemical elements with age and
position in the Galactic disk. In the present work we analyze the star
formation history and the chemical evolution of the disk of the Galaxy using
numerical simulations of the dynamical evolution of the system of open clusters
in the Milky Way. Starting from hypotheses on the history of cluster formation
and the chemical enrichment of the disk, we model the present properties of the
Galactic open cluster system. The comparison of these models with the
observations allows us to examine the validity of the assumed hypotheses and to
improve our knowledge about the initial conditions of the chemical evolution of
the Galactic disk.
