  We have investigated the effect of initial mass segregation on the runaway
merging of stars. The evolution of multi-mass, dense star clusters was followed
by means of direct N-body simulations of up to 131.072 stars. All clusters
started from King models with dimensionless central potentials of 3.0 <= W_0 <=
9.0. Initial mass segregation was realized by varying the minimum mass of a
certain fraction of stars whose either (1) distances were closest to the
cluster center or (2) total energies were lowest. The second case is more
favorable to promote the runaway merging of stars by creating a high-mass core
of massive, low-energy stars. Initial mass segregation could decrease the
central relaxation time and thus help the formation of a high-mass core.
However, we found that initial mass segregation does not help the runaway
stellar merger to happen if the overall mass density profile is kept constant.
This is due to the fact that the collision rate of stars is not increased due
to initial mass segregation. Our simulations show that initial mass segregation
is not sufficient to allow runaway merging of stars to occur in clusters with
central densities typical for star clusters in the Milky Way.
