While the expanding process of cylindrical shells under internal explosive loadings is fundamental and ubiquitous in engineering applications, the comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanism is still a challenge due to the limitation of the spatial resolution on the current diagnostic techniques. To address this issue, an improved densely-arranged multi-point photon Doppler velocimetry (DMPDV) technique with enough spatial resolution to capture the local dynamical evolution was carefully designed. The DMPDV technique was then applied to investigate the expanding behavior of an explosively driven 304 L stainless steel cylindrical shell. As a step beyond the coarse understanding of the overall dynamical response, the expanding process can then be demonstrated comprehensively with more exact concentrations on one fragment. By the combination of DMPDV and high-speed photography, we uncovered the evolution of the expanding process which can be divided into three stages: (1) In the beginning, due to the symmetries of the specimen and the loading, the cylinder expands uniformly and all the velocity-time curves at different hoop positions are coincide with each other. (2) after the emergence of cracks at the outer surface of the cylinder, the velocity-time curves start to separate from each other and are regularly arranged according to their test positions. (3) following the penetration of the crack through the thickness of the cylinder, there is a reverse in the velocity-time curves and the fragments begin to rotate, the rotation angle can be estimated using the velocity difference. The hidden mechanism is then revealed with the help of unloading wave theory and rigid body dynamics. Here the second stage is dominated by unloading wave while the last stage is controlled by the denotation products. These experimental results provide deep insight into the detailed fracture behavior of expanding cylindrical shell and are further validated by the Mott wave models as well as numerical simulations, respectively.