In mine excavation blasting engineering, smooth blasting typically uses detonating cords to transmit the explosion. This process has low construction efficiency, consumes a significant amount of blasting equipment, and increases the mine's production costs. To solve this problem, the sympathetic characteristics of explosives can be utilized to initiate detonation within holes. A research method that combines experiments on emulsion explosives' sympathetic detonation under various confinement materials with numerical simulations of the sympathetic detonation process in rocks is adopted. By analyzing the impact of confinement conditions, decoupling coefficients, and other factors on the sympathetic detonation distance of explosives, the stable sympathetic detonation distances of emulsion explosives with varying diameters and lengths in boreholes are identified. The conclusions are as follows: confinement conditions significantly influence the sympathetic detonation distance of explosives, with improved confinement resulting in a greater sympathetic detonation range. Under a specific radial uncoupling coefficient, the diameter of the explosive exerts a minor influence on the sympathetic detonation distance, which increases as the charge diameter enlarges. Additionally, the sympathetic detonation distance diminishes with an increase in the radial uncoupling coefficient and extends with the length of the explosive charge. Industrial trials were conducted to verify the findings, with the explosive spacing set at 70 cm. The results indicate that, in comparison to the conventional construction method utilizing detonating cord, the cost of blasting materials for smooth blasting in roof holes was diminished by 33.1 yuan per meter, representing a reduction of 36.1%.