Driving torque of rotating machinery, such as automobile engines, changes periorically. As a result, torsional vibrations occur and cause serious noise and vibration problems. In this study, the dynamic characterisitics of centrifugal pendulum vibration absorbers restraining torsional vibration is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. In the theoretical analysis, the nonlinear characteristics are taken into consideration under the assumption of large amplitude vibration of pendulum. It is clarified that the centrifugal pendulum, although it has remarkable effects on suppressing harmonic vibration, induces large amplitude harmonic vibrations, second and third superharmonic resonances, and unstable vibrations of harmonic type. We propose various methods to suppress these secondarily induced vibrations and show that it is possible to suppress torisional vibrations to substantially zero amplitude in all through the rotational speed ranges.