  Based on the Bica et al. (1999) catalogue we studied the star cluster system
of the LMC and provide a new catalogue of all binary and multiple cluster
candidates found. We performed Monte Carlo simulations and produced artificial
cluster distributions that we compared with the real one in order to check how
many of the found cluster pairs and groups can be expected statistically due to
chance superposition on the plane of the sky. We found that, depending on the
cluster density, between 56% (bar region) and 12% (outer LMC) of the detected
pairs can be explained statistically. We studied in detail the properties of
the multiple cluster candidates. The binary cluster candidates seem to show a
tendency to form with components of similar size. When possible, we studied the
age structure of the cluster groups and found that the multiple clusters are
predominantly young with only a few cluster groups older than 300 Myr. The
spatial distribution of the cluster pairs and groups coincides with the
distribution of clusters in general; however, old groups or groups with large
internal age differences are mainly located in the densely populated bar
region. Thus, they can easily be explained as chance superpositions. Our
findings show that a formation scenario through tidal capture is not only
unlikely due to the low probability of close encounters of star clusters, and
thus the even lower probability of tidal capture, but the few groups with large
internal age differences can easily be explained with projection effects. We
favour a formation scenario as suggested by Fujimoto & Kumai (1997) in which
the components of a binary cluster formed together and thus should be coeval or
have small age differences compatible with cluster formation time scales.
