The model interpretability refers to the ability to express the real system behavior in an understandable way. With the increasing of reliability requirements in engineering practice, establishing a reliable and interpretable model to enhance human understanding of real systems has become one of the main objectives. Rule-based modeling approach can describe the system mechanism more intuitively. It can not only effectively integrate quantitative information and qualitative knowledge, but can also deal with uncertain information flexibly. This paper combs researches on the interpretability of rule-based modeling approach around the knowledge base, inference engine and model optimization, and finally makes a brief review and prospect. Copyright © 2021 Acta Automatica Sinica. All rights reserved.