Abstract: Annular fuel is a new type nuclear fuel for pressure water reactor (PWR). An annular fuel element has an external cladding corresponding to external coolant channel and an inner cladding corresponding to inner coolant channel, so the PWR of annular fuel has lower core temperature, less fission gas and higher safety allowance. As a new type nuclear fuel and prior to formally operation in the reactor, it’s necessary to test various performances of annular fuel under loss of coolant accident (LOCA) condition outofpile to ensure the safety of reactor core. In order to obtain the empirical relation of temperature and strain under swelling and rupture condition with LOCA of annular fuel external cladding, providing necessary input for design and calculation, and preliminarily evaluating its swelling and rupture performance, experiment of swelling and rupture of annular fuel external cladding was performed outofpile in China Institute of Atomic Energy. Under different heating rates and different internal pressures and in superheated steam atmosphere, which simulated the condition of LOCA in the actual reactor, the experiments were conducted through infrared heating outside cladding surface by infrared heating furnace. The result of single rod was analyzed and the empirical relations obtained from the entire results were summarized. The measurement error of temperature in the experiment was explained. The influencing factors such as heating rate, degree of oxidation and circumferential temperature difference of rupture temperature and strain under same internal pressure in the experiments were analyzed briefly. The experimental results were compared with NUREG0630 published by US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1970s to verify the rationality. On the whole, the rupture temperature decreases with the increase of internal pressure and increases with the increase of heating rate, and the variation of rupture strain with rupture temperature is consistent with NUREG0630. The experimental results are in accord with the law, which is in good agreement with the results in NUREG0630. The data obtained from the experiment can be used in the design, calculation and improvement of annular fuel.