Intermediate-mass stars: Updated models

A new set of stellar models in the mass range 1.2-9 M. is presented. The ad opted chemical compositions cover the typical Galactic values,namely, 0.000 1 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 comp ilations of similar stellar models is also discussed. The main conclusion i s that the differences among the various evolutionary results are still rat her large. For example, we found that the H-burning evolutionary time may d iffer up to 20%. An even larger disagreement is found for the He-burning ph ase (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 di screpancies 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 o f 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.