Abstract: An iron mine in Fujian that is mining a hydrologically complicated deposit with karst water, faces the problems of not only high water pressure and high water inflow but also unclear local depth hydrological conditions when transiting to depth mining.Therefore, it is imperative for it to carry out large scale drainage test.The paper describes how to design the drainage test in accordance with the hydrological conditions and production demand, including the selection of the drainage test mode and test engineering layout, rational design of the test sequence, and estimation of drainage flowrate and drawdown to satisfy the requirements of reducing the karst water level and verifying the hydrological conditions.There are some innovative techniques that are adopted in the design of underground drainage test such as the combined drainage of both the sublevel and its advanced sublevel, and non-uniform layout of drain holes, which can be references for the drainage tests for depth mining of other mines.

Key words: Drainage test, Karst water, Hydrological conditions