The stellar spatial distribution as a function of mass is studied in 11 young open clusters and the presence of mass segregation is observed in seven of these. The possibility of two cluster centres is indicated for NGC 2264. Except in Tr 1, the conventional relaxation and energy equipartition times are larger than the cluster ages which may indicate that the observed mass segregation is due to the star formation processes. However, the possibility of dynamical processes being responsible for the effect of mass segregation in some of these clusters cannot be completely ruled out. Present analysis suggests that observed mass segregation in open clusters older than some million years might be due to a combination of both initial star formation conditions and dynamical evolutionary processes, but in younger ones only initial star formation conditions can be responsible.
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Sagar et al. (1988) studied this question.