In the first section of this paper there are given criteria for strict convexity and smoothness of the Bochner-Orlicz space with the Orlicz norm as well as the Luxemburg norm. In the second one that geometrical properties are applied to the characterization of metric projections and zero mean valued best approximants to Bochner-Orlicz spaces.

Let E be a Banach space. Let $L{¹}_{\left(1\right)}({ℝ}^d,E)$ be the Sobolev space of E-valued functions on ${ℝ}^d$ with the norm ${ʃ}_{{ℝ}^d}\parallel f{\parallel }_{E}dx+{ʃ}_{{ℝ}^d}\parallel \nabla f{\parallel }_{E}dx=\parallel f\parallel ₁+\parallel \nabla f\parallel ₁$. It is proved that if $f\in L{¹}_{\left(1\right)}({ℝ}^d,E)$ then there exists a sequence $\left(g_m\right)\subset L_{\left(1\right)}¹({ℝ}^d,E)$ such that $f={\sum }_m{g}_m$; ${\sum }_m(\parallel g_m\parallel ₁+\parallel \nabla g_m\parallel ₁)<\infty$; and $\parallel g_m{\parallel }_{\infty }^{1/d}\parallel g_m\parallel {₁}^{(d-1)/d}\le b\parallel \nabla g_m\parallel ₁$ for m = 1, 2,..., where b is an absolute constant independent of f and E. The result is applied to prove various refinements of the Sobolev type embedding $L_{\left(1\right)}¹({ℝ}^d,E)\hookrightarrow L²({ℝ}^d,E)$. In particular, the embedding into Besov spaces $L{¹}_{\left(1\right)}({ℝ}^d,E)\hookrightarrow B_{p,1}^{\theta (p,d)}({ℝ}^d,E)$ is proved, where $\theta (p,d)=d(p^{-1}+d^{-1}-1)$ for 1 < p ≤ d/(d-1), d=1,2,... The latter embedding in the scalar case is due to Bourgain and Kolyada....