Intermediate-mass stars: Updated models

A new set of stellar models in the mass range 1.2-9 M. is presented. The adopted chemical compositions cover the typical Galactic values,namely, 0.0001 less than or equal to Z less than or equal to 0.02 and 0.23 less than or equal to Y less than or equal to 0.28. A comparison of the most recent compilations of similar stellar models is also discussed. The main conclusion is that the differences among the various evolutionary results are still rather large. For example, we found that the H-burning evolutionary time may differ up to 20%. An even larger disagreement is found for the He-burning phase (up to 40%-50%). Since the connection between the various input physics and the numerical algorithms could amplify or counterbalance the effect of a single ingredient on the resulting stellar model, the origin of these discrepancies is not evident. However most of these discrepancies, which are clearly found in the evolutionary tracks, are reduced on the isochrones. By means of our updated models we show that the ages inferred by the theory of stellar evolution is in excellent agreement with those obtained by using other independent methods applied to the nearby open clusters. Finally, the theoretical initial/final mass relation is revised.