  The present study of spectra of twelve metal-rich cool dwarf stars, carefully
selected in order to cover a range of temperatures (~4400 - 6000 K), is a
follow up on Feltzing & Gustafsson (1998, A&AS 129, 237) with the aim to
understand the apparent over-ionization and anomalous elemental abundances
found by them for the K dwarf stars in their sample. Our method of analysis
employs synthetic spectra of the full spectrum both to constrain the continuum
level and to derive abundances. It is shown that by using this method and
imposing a strict excitation equilibrium (possible to do because of the care in
selection of observed Fe I lines) we are able to show that metal-rich K dwarf
stars do not show anomalous stellar abundances, as indicated in Feltzing &
Gustafsson (1998), and can, with reasonable efforts, be analyzed in order to
increase the number of metal-rich stars with useful chemical abundances. With
abundance analysis by means of spectrum synthesis and assuming Local
Thermodynamic Equilibrium (LTE) the abundances of Na, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr,
Fe, Co, Ni, and Nd have been derived. Also ionization balance is satisfied for
Fe and Cr after correcting the stellar effective temperatures such that both
ionization and excitation equilibrium were satisfied. In addition, spectra from
five cool dwarf stars of the Feltzing & Gustafsson (1998) sample have been
analyzed with the methods used in this work. They show essentially the same
abundance patterns as the new stars in this sample.
