Is HD 163899 really a supergiant star?

According to its spectral type B2 Ib/I I (Klare & Neckel 1977; Schmidt & Carruthers 1996), HD163899 is a supergiant star. The star presents p and g-mode pulsations (Saio et al. 2006). In such a post-main sequence (post MS) star, the helium core is radiative with a very large Brunt-Väisälä frequency which produces a strong damping. The presence of excited g-modes is however possible thanks to an intermediate convective zone (ICZ) which prevents some g-modes from entering the radiative damping core (Saio et al. 2006). We have investigated an alternative solution. We show that MS evolutionary tracks could cross the error box of HD 163899 if a sufficiently large amount of overshooting is taken into account. However, in that case, the spectrum of unstable modes is different from the spectrum of a supergiant star since the Brunt-Väisälä frequency is much smaller.