Evolution of Planetary Nebulae with WR-type Central Stars

This thesis presents a study of the kinematics, physical conditions and chemical abundances for a sample of Galactic planetary nebulae (PNe) with Wolf-Rayet (WR) and weak emission-line stars (wels), based on optical integral field unit (IFU) spectroscopy obtained with the Wide Field Spectrograph (WiFeS) on the Australian National University 2.3 telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, and complemented by spectra from the literature. PNe surrounding WR-type stars constitute a particular study class for this study. A considerable fraction of currently well-identified central stars of PNe exhibit 'hydrogen-deficient' fast expanding atmospheres characterized by a large mass-loss rate. Most of them were classified as the carbon-sequence and a few of them as the nitrogen-sequence of the WR-type stars. What are less clear are the physical mechanisms and evolutionary paths that remove the hydrogen-rich outer layer from these degenerate cores, and transform it into a fast stellar wind. The aim of this thesis is to determine kinematic structure, density distribution, thermal structure and elemental abundances for a sample of PNe with different hydrogen-deficient central stars, which might provide clues about the origin and formation of their hydrogen-deficient stellar atmospheres.