Abstract:In 2011, several massive pieces of iron meteorites, among which Wuxilike weighs 5 tons, were found in Aletai city, Xinjiang Province. It was immediately recognized that they are siblings of a single meteorite shower (Aletai), which broke apart when entering into the earth's atmosphere. Iron meteorites record the history of melting, differentiation, disintegration and cooling process in its parent body. Thus, the study on its internal structure is very crucial to understand both the thermal and magnetic history of its parent body. \newline \indent Several types of structures in Wuxilike, including the coarse kamacite/taenite Widmanstatten structure, the comb/spheroidal plessite and the cloudy zone, were examined. In particular, the Ni gradient across taenite lamella was corrected by considering its spatial orientation. Moreover, the kinetics modeling on the taenite-to-kamacite phase transformation was established to simulate the Ni gradients developed near the phase interface during the cooling under different rates. By the combination of measured relation of Ni content at the middle of kamacite lamella vs. its half thickness and such a relation calculated by the modeling, the cooling rate of Wuxilike between 695 and 400℃ is found to be in the range of 32–75℃/Myr with an average value of 49℃/Myr.In the comb plessite, the kamacite lamellas all have the same orientation and maintain the K-S orientation with the neighboring Ni-rich shell of taenite lamellas, in which relatively fine taenite particles were randomly present. This suggests that the taenite lamella in the comb plessite should first transform to martensite at MS temperature during cooling except for its outer shell having higher Ni content, and then martensite is decomposed to particle-like taenite and taenite at lower temperature. The cloudy zone is formed by spinodal decomposition of taenite below 350?C during the cooling rate of 7℃/Myr, which is estimated according to the measured sizes and Ni contents of taenite islands in the cloudy zone. In summary, we determined the thermal history of Wuxilike that is responsible for forming various structures in this iron meteorite, including the coarse Widmanstatten structure formed during the cooling from 695?C to 400℃ at 49℃/Myr, the spheroidal plessite by the decomposition of martensite below MS temperature, the cloudy zone developed during the cooling from 350?C to 200℃ at 7℃/Myr. We believe that our proposed modeling in the basis of solid phase transformation can be effectively employed on accurately predicting the cooling history and rate for all the kinds of iron meteorites.