Non-occurrence of the Lavrentiev phenomenon for a class of convex nonautonomous Lagrangians

We consider the classical functional of the Calculus of Variations of the form I(u)=∫ΩF(x,u(x),∇u(x))dx, where Ω is a bounded open subset of ℝn and F : Ω × ℝ × ℝn → ℝ is a Carathéodory convex function; the admissible functions u coincide with a prescribed Lipschitz function ϕ on ∂Ω. We formulate some conditions under which a given function in ϕ + W1,p0(Ω) with I(u) < +∞ can be approximated in the W1,p norm and in energy by a sequence of smooth functions that coincide with ϕ on ∂Ω. As a particular case we obtain that the Lavrentiev phenomenon does not occur when F(x, u, ξ) = f(x, u) + h(x, ξ) is convex and x ↦ F(x, 0, 0) is sufficiently smooth.